Sehwag's new innings - an education businessman

​Viru goes back to school

It's a bumpy ride through Haryana's hinterland to Silani Kesho on the main Jhajjar road. Thankfully, potholes give way to silky smooth roads as soon as one reaches Sultanpur bird sanctuary, around 15 kilometres from Gurgaon, and thereafter the journey is a breeze. The wheat crop has just been harvested and the fields are a profusion of hazels and browns, having just had the golden crowns sheared off. As you are taking in the rustic scene the Sehwag International School suddenly swims into sight out of nowhere. The school would have been more at home alongside Gurgaon's sleek structures rather than in the rural heartland of Haryana. And yet here it is, standing as a mark of Virender Sehwag's new innings as an education businessman.

In the past two months, a barrage of advertisements and pamphlets in leading papers, and banner ads on the web, sporting a picture of the smiling former India cricketer, have been shouting loudly about the new school. Knowing Sehwag as a rough-and-ready man for whom even graduation from Jamia Millia Islamia became a feted event, one wonders whether the 35-year-old cricketer has merely lent his name to the institution or if he has really set out to become pedagogue.

"Earlier there was a lot of speculation that I had only endorsed the school and given it my name. It is to clear this notion that I have been giving interviews in the media and putting out ads. The school is my baby, I have nurtured it," says Sehwag in a phone conversation.